Photography: Keith Pattison

By Chris Hill

We’ve arrived in Southampton to begin the long process of adding in all of the technical elements of the show to what we’ve been doing in the rehearsal room. It’s a daunting process, especially for this show as there is so much to bring together. Each lighting cue, sound cue, actor entrance, piece of projection or scenery move has to be precisely plotted before we can run the show.

Photography: Keith Pattison

By Chris Hill

Justin Avoth as Theseus and Emily Joyce as Hippolyta in one of the film clips from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Photo: Keith Pattison

On Monday we transformed our spacious rehearsal room into a busy film studio for the day in order to film all of the audio-visual sequences we’re using in the piece. Ian William Galloway (Video Designer) arrived laden with lights, tripods, green screens, cameras and lenses ready to capture the sequences we had rehearsed the previous week.

By Chris Hill

This week we have begun to put the production on its feet and sketch out our initial ideas for how each scene might be staged. Possible ways of looking at the scene are discussed and some of them are played out in the space. These different versions are mined for useful discoveries and so we slowly begin to build up a picture of what the piece is going to look like.

By Tom Scutt

By Chris Hill

The first week of any rehearsal period is always a bit of a whirlwind. We started the week with a ‘meet and greet’ where the cast, creative team and the Headlong team all sit down with a coffee and a biscuit to begin the process of getting to know the people they are going to be spending the next couple of months with.